WHIGS AND TORIES. 



ion. " The whig*," says Hume, " suitably to their 

 ancient principles of liberty, which hud led them to 

 attempt the exclusion bill, easily agreed to oppose 

 a king whose conduct had justified whatever his 

 worst enemies had prognosticated concerning his 

 succession. The tories and the church party, find- 

 ing their past services forgotten, their rights in- 

 vaded, their religion threatened, agreed to drop, for 

 the present, all overstrained doctrines of submis- 

 sion, and attend to the great and powerful dictates 

 of nature. The nonconformists, dreading the ca- 

 resses of known and inveterate enemies, deemed 

 the offers of toleration more secure from a prince 

 educated in those principles, and accustomed to 

 that practice ; and thus all faction was, for a time, 

 laid asleep in England ; and rival parties, forgetting 

 their animosity, had secretly concurred in a design 

 of resisting their unhappy and misguided sovereign." 

 During the reign ot William (16881702), the 

 parties were not, therefore, so distinctly divided as 

 they had been previously, and have been subse- 

 quently. The impeachment of Sacheverell, during 

 the reign of queen Anne, again brought the two 

 theories of government, which formed the original 

 distinction between the whigs and tories, into col- 

 lision, and, combined with some bed-chamber in- 

 trigues and court quarrels, resulted in the appoint- 

 ment of a tory ministry, at the head of which were 

 Bolingbroke and Oxford. On the accession of the 

 house of Hanover (1714), the scale was again 

 changed, and the whole power was now thrown 

 into the hands of the whigs. See George I. and 

 //. and Walpole ; on the origin and early character 

 and history of these parties, see Rapin's Disserta- 

 tion or. the Whigs and Tories, and Bolingbroke's 

 Dissertation upon Parties. 



The following remarks from a celebrated whig 

 journal (Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvii. p. 21 

 25) will show the state of parties at that critical 

 period. " The accession of the house of Hanover 

 divided England into two parties, the whigs, or 

 friends of the new establishment, and the tories and 

 Jacobites, its secret or avowed opponents. The 

 tories, bigoted to the notion of indefeasible right 

 in the succession to the crown, but apprehensive for 

 their religion if a papist should mount the throne, 

 were distracted between their scruples about the 

 validity of a parliamentary settlement and their 

 fears lest, in subverting it, they might restore, or 

 pave the way for the restoration of the Catholic 

 church. Though deterred by their religious fears, 

 from embarking decidedly in the cause of the Pre- 

 tender, they kept on terms with his friends, and 

 were not unwilling to disturb, though they hesita- 

 ted to overturn, a government they disliked, be- 

 cause it was founded on principles they abhorred. 

 The Jacobites, though most of them were zealous 

 members of the church of England, had a stronger 

 infusion of bigotry in their composition, and were 

 ready to restore a popish family, and submit to a 

 popish sovereign, rather than own a government 

 founded on a parliamentary title. It was impossi- 

 ble that either tories or Jacobites should have the 

 con6dence of the Hanoverian princes ; and, there- 

 fore, while those divisions subsisted, all places of 

 power and profit were in the hands of the whigs. 

 Of these two parties, the tories and Jacobites were 

 the most numerous. They included a certain num- 

 ber of the ancient nobility, and comprehended a 

 very large proportion of the landed interest, and, 

 what-gave them a prodigious influence in those days, 

 a vast majority of the parochial clergy. The 



strength of the whigs lay in the great aristocracy, 

 in the corporations, and in the trading and moneyed 

 interests. The dissenters, who held popery in ab- 

 horrence, and dreaded the overbearing spirit of the 

 church, were warmly attached to a government that 

 protected their religious liberty, and, as far as it 

 durst, extended to them every civil right. It has 

 perhaps, been fortunate in its results for England, 

 that her church was for so many years in hostility 

 to her government. It was during this temporary 

 dissolution of the vaunted alliance between church 

 and state, that religious freedom, such as it exi-H 

 among us, struck so deep and vigorous a root as to 

 withstand every subsequent effort to blighten or 

 subvert it. It was during this period that the an- 

 nual indemnity bills were introduced, which though 

 they have left the stigma, have taken from the test 

 act its sting: and it was during the same period 

 that the toleration act received, in practice, that 

 liberal interpretation which extends its benefits to 

 every possible sect of Christians, the unhappy Ca- 

 tholics alone excepted. This protracted struggle 

 between the adherents of the house of Hanover and 

 the partisans of the Stuarts, was not, however, un- 

 attended with disadvantages. It confounded for a 

 time, the ancient distinctions of whig and tory. 

 which had turned on constitutional differences of 

 real and eternal importance, and converted two po- 

 litical sects, or parties, into two factions contending 

 for the crown. The tories, forced to remain in op- 

 position to the government, learned to ape the lan- 

 guage, and ended by adopting many of the opinions 

 of their adversaries. The whigs, believing the 

 preservation of their liberties depended on the 

 maintenance of the parliamentary settlement of the 

 crown, and finding themselves in a minority in the 

 country, were constrained to employ measures and 

 sanction proceedings from which their ancestors 

 would have recoiled. To counteract the local in- 

 fluence of the gentry, they practised and encouraged 

 corruption, both within parliament and without, and 

 thus turned against their enemies the weapon they 

 had invented under the Stuarts. To suppress tu- 

 mults of the rabble, instigated by the vehicles of 

 tory sentiment, annually exported from Oxford, and 

 dispersed over the kingdom, they armed the magis- 

 trates with additional, and, till then, unknown pow- 

 ers ; and, to defeat the enterprises of foreign princes, 

 acting in conjunction with the disaffected at home, 

 they maintained a standing army in time of peace." 

 The riot act was passed, the triennial act repealed, 

 and the habeas corpus act suspended by the whigs, on 

 the accession of the house of Hanover, and a shame- 

 less system of corruption and laxity of political 

 principle introduced, the whole extent of which 

 has but recently been fully exposed to public view. 

 Walpole was finally compelled to retire, by the 

 united opposition of a party of disaffected whigs, 

 acting under lord Carteret (afterwards Granville) 

 and Mr Pulteney, the tories led by Wyndham, and 

 the Jacobites by Shippen, who, Walpole used to say, 

 was the only man whose price he did not know. 

 The whigs still retained their power ; and, after 

 some changes, the Pelham administration was 

 formed, in 1743, by the nomination of Henry Pel- 

 ham to the place of first lord of the treasury. " A 

 more inglorious period of our annals," says the 

 writer last quoted, " is scarce to be found, than 

 from this year to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 

 (1748) defeats and disasters abroad, rebellion 

 (that of 1745) and discontent at home, no concert 

 or activity in the government the king thwarting 



